Mark Hughes wrote:

> >> The DNS is NOT a Directory Service.
> >>
> >> The DNS as a whole is not a directory service.
> >> The existing gTLDs are not a directory service.
> >> The .au namespace and none of the .au 2LDs are a
> >> directory service.
>
> > The advent of GUIs and search engines/classified list sites
> > provide much more powerful and more granular access - they map
> > 'single mouse clicks' to IP addresses and right down to the
> > individual resources (pages in the most part, pictures, movies,
> > forms, etc) stored somewhere at that IP address. The utility
> > of using these as a 'directory service' so exceeds guessing or
> > algorithmicly determining DNS names its just not funny.
>
> Search engines are valuable, but they're not directories.  As a 'directory'
> search engines are as much a failure as the existing parts of the DNS.

Note that I didn't actually say they _were_ a directory, I said they were closer
to a directory than a crowded DNS tree (and arguably the classified hierarchical
section of sites like Yahoo _are_ close to your requirements for a directory) in
the services provided to the general population - a means of finding the correct
website content given some prior fuzzy idea of the organisation name or contents
of the content.

As an example, in a true directory I should be able to get a list of sites of a
particular class or similar characteristic - for instance, pubs in Sydney :-).
If I'm feeling thirsty after work tomorrow (err...today), I can't do a DNS query
that will list out for me a selection of nearby watering holes but I can get a
VERY focussed and relevent list by going to Google and typing 'pub sydney' (go
on, try it!). Its not a set of unique links, nor is it a fully complete list,
and there are a couple of irrelevent links as well - but its good enough for my
purposes,  and much better that what a DNS query can give me.

(I tried both MX and ADDR lookups for '*pub*.*.au', but got back error codes
both times :-^),

> If the white pages phone directory operated the same way as search engines,
> searching for someone's phone number would give a response that included:

...

> * no guarantee that the RIGHT number you were looking for was present among
> the 32,699 numbers
> * At least 99.99% of the responses presented would be WRONG numbers
> * A fair proportion of the responses would be numbers of sex services :)

> No, search engines are not a replacement for a directory.

Never said they were Mark - but I see them as a vast step up from DNS name
guessing - and if those stats you quoted are typical of your experiences, I'd
humbly suggest you try a different search site! :)

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